Kandinsky and the Russian Soul
Russians and the 'Russian element' Russian Poets and Thinkers on their Own Country and People
by Mark Petrov
The estimate that Russians make of themselves is incredibly contradictory. Are the Russian people good or bad? Energetic or indolent? Humble of full of national self-importance? Go-ahead or passive? A lover of freedom or happy to submit to any kind of power? Religious or forgetful of God? Since Peter the Great, the time in which our people were divided into two contrasting levels ('high' and 'low', 'popular' and 'elitist', 'secular' and 'religious'), even though questions were asked, no answers were forthcoming. It is impossible to answer these questions in a single way and it is not enough simply to state that they exist. Inquiring minds cannot be satisfied with such an answer: 'All these qualities cohabit paradoxically in the Russian national character'. Once that has been established it is necessary to go further: how do these and other opposites, such as the spiritual, emotional, and behavioural character, cohabit?
Let us remember two universally known truths: 1) in every people it is possible to find individuals and kinds of national life wildly different from each other; 2) every nation has its own story, it is a unicum and has its own range of contradictory characteristics and a peculiar style in the relationships between such characteristics. But I do not want to write about how the Russian people, Russia, and its national character de facto are. I am writing, rather, of what Russian thinkers and poets have individuated as the Russian element in the Russian man, in his country, his history and life.
So let's talk about Russian self-awareness.
Russia as a 'mystery'. An enigmatic amor di patria
Russians are artists of self-awareness. Ours is perhaps the most 'problematic' culture of all. Undoubtedly this is an important component. But for Russia the answers to essential questions or the constructive solutions to them are something rare. Yuri Mamleev quotes a note from 'The Western Observer Netzer': 'Typical of Russians is a sense of reality devoid of illusions which, however, is mixed with a tendency towards aims the fulfilment of which goes beyond the very bounds of reality'. Here we find 'realism' with unrealisable aims. But let's look at the national tendency to questions that cannot be answered. In the same text we fin this account: 'I was struck by the statement of an Englishman. He said, "In Russians the most surprising thing is that they ask themselves [my italics] and, what's more, with great passion and interest, the question: What is Russia? At home no one would ask what England was. It would sound absurd. Everybody knows that England is a country with a parliament"'. Evidently, for this Englishman the difference in style between English self-awareness and that of a Russian was so absurd that, with regard to his own country, he simplified the problem. But this is shown by Russian poetry from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of its peculiarities is the presence in it of dialogue form: the poets turn to Russia as though to a human being in flesh and blood, often considering their motherland as a female hypostasis, Alexandr Blok above all (Russia is 'mother', 'wife', 'fiancée', 'sister'). In particular the national theme is characterised by frequent declarations of love for the motherland inseparable from themes of mystery, enigma and miracles. So this dialogue with Russia became a basic interest for many poets: 'Russia, what do you mean for the heart?' (Alexandr Blok, An Autumn Day, 1909). Obviously this question is asked of the poet himself because Russia, as Nikolay Gogol stated in Dead Souls, does not reveal its mysteries ('It gives no answers'). Sergey Esenin is not the only one to ask the question: 'I love you my tender homeland, but I don't understand why' (Rus, 1914). On the other hand everyone knows that we love without a reason. Love is inexplicable because it is, by its very nature, a mystery.
Many decades before Esenin there appeared in the poetry of Lermontov the theme of the 'strange love' for the homeland: 'But I love you, though I myself do not know why' (Homeland, 1841). Since Lermontov 'the feeling of mystery has become the cornerstone of Russian poetry... The words Russia and Russian soul have become inseparable from mystery'. In his poem The Shiites, 1918, Aleksandr Blok exhorts the West - 'knowledgeable as Oedipus' - to solve the riddle of the 'Russian Sphinx'.
Oedipus solved the Sphinx's riddle because, after all, riddles can be solved, problems are explained, questions are answered. Mysteries, instead, are always left unresolved. The more the knowledge of mankind is amplified and deepened, the more the horizons of the unknown open up. The horizon is unreachable, the mysteries remain. Having realised this a Hellenic philosopher observed, 'I know I do not know'.
Russian poets not only 'don't know' why they love their country, they don't even know 'what Russia is'. In itself this is nothing surprising. What is amazing, though, is with what force, passion, and insistence the problem of Russian self-knowledge is posed in national culture. In Russia the national theme is connected to the constant 'spiritual permanence within mystery'. And not only within a limited Russian 'mystery', but within the great mystery of the universe. This is the symbolic image of Russia that we find in the artistic and intellectual interpretation of Russians, in Russian thought about the basis of their own essence and their own spiritual 'organisation'.
Russian antinomianism
To say that the nature of the Russians is contradictory and that they create an image of Russia on the basis of contrasting principles means not to examine the national theme at all. All cultures and nations are contradictory. The contrasting aspects are those that have light thrown on them by an outsider or are studied from within. What does the specificity of Russian 'inconsistency' consist in? Here we must proceed by making comparisons. For example, often it is said that the Germans are cruel but sentimental, that they have the cult of order (Ordnung) but that they are also inclined to an individualist mysticism. The English are a pragmatic and realistic nation but they are also famous for their devotion to tradition, to sublimated forms of existence, to etiquette. We speak of the French as though they were fanatical rationalists, and yet they are also 'arbiters of taste', hedonists and brilliant avant-garde artists. The Italians are often judged to be a people of great artistic talent but disorganised and unruly in everyday life, volatile but moody, openly emotional and exuberant, but nursing their passions or grudges until the end.
When listing all these 'biased' judgements on the great European nations, we should remind ourselves that we are, in fact, within the 'sphere of opinions' and, in the second place, that all relative contradictions represent a kind of pseudo-inconsistency typical of various cultural and existential timbres. For example, the principle of individual self-expressive freedom allows the combination of Italian artistic talent with a kind of 'exuberance' in national life. Artistic talent is simply a sublimation of this vitality, it is a manifestation of the self raised to a high level of formal and stylistic elaboration. In Europe there are various aspects in the overall formation of national identity rather than genuine contradictions. But to return to Russia. According to the Russian interpretation national contradictions cancel each other out and, therefore, are more correctly considered as poles. The Russian philosopher Nikolay Berdyaev wrote, 'We can get near to a solution to the mystery inherent in the Russian soul on condition that we recognise at once the antinomianism (my italics) of Russia itself, its tragic inconsistency... The work of the Russian spirit differs in the same way as Russian historical reality [...]. In other countries too we come across various conflicts, but only in Russia does the thesis resolve into antithesis: a bureaucratic regime rises from anarchy, slavery from freedom, blind chauvinism from ultra-nationalism [i.e. aspiration to a greater unity].
Berdyaev is trying to say that the contradictions in western life have their own equilibrium, they balance out. In Russia instead conflicts are not only polarised but can swap places with each other, a positive charge can invert into a negative one.
The cultural historian and scholar Georgy Fedotov points out, 'For that matter, in the case of the Russian soul it is impossible to speak of nuances: all contradictions are expressed with unusual harshness'. Let me give an example. Speaking of the typical tendency of Russians to go on lengthy binges, to get drunk and 'throw themselves away', Fedotov notes that at times Russian drunken sprees are sad and gloomy, but often they are happy, generous, and noble. 'In this case too, gloominess and childishness polarise [my italics] Russian freedom... Uncontrolled joy cannot satisfy Russian men for long. Everything ends in a serious, tragic way' unless they manage to stop in time. This observation on the exchangeability of freedom and imprisonment that the poet Osip Mandel'stam dropped almost by chance into his Conversation on Dante, was undoubtedly aimed, not so much at fourteenth century Italy, as much as the Soviet Union in the '30s of the twentieth century, the period of the bloody Stalinist repression. In the conscience and world vision of many people the idea of the prison was extended to the very borders of the country, even the real determinability of these conflicting poles was no longer perceived. The prison became a common form of life.
The direct opposition of prison and freedom stopped being so in certain historical periods. This historical situation, which in Russia was always full of dramatic tensions, has generated in Russians, in their dominating social moods, in Russian models of life, a particular predisposition to rapid 'changes in belief' and of views. In connection with this, the philosopher, theologian and scholar Evgeny Trubetskoy has been extremely acute: 'The maximalism typical of our national character forces us to face, in all existential problems, the dilemma of all or nothing. This is why we slide so deftly from extreme megalomania to the blackest desperation. The Russians are from one moment to the next God's chosen people and the most miserable in the world'. I think that Berdyaev was quite right when he saw in awareness of the antinomianism of the Russian soul the way for solving the riddle.
The energy of opposites
In the search for a national peculiarity in the Russian soul, mentality, and character, philosophers and writers have pointed out as an obvious trait of Russians the characteristic that Ivan Il'in called 'passionate candour'. He wrote, ' Russians do not believe with the mind but with the fire of their heart' [my italics]. By 'the fire of the heart' and 'passionate candour' he did not mean southern passion, all exterior gesture and agitation. Russian poets and thinkers distinguish as the distinctive traits of their fellow countrymen their extraordinary spiritual energy and extreme emotion in dealing with intellectual problems, the interior tension of feelings to which must be added that Russian maximalism already referred to by Trubetskoy and many others. Perhaps in particular this is the national characteristic that shows the intensely inquiring attitude of Russian culture, its 'problematic' attitude in the face of both itself and the world. The emotive tragedy of many of Dostoevsky's characters consists in the impossibility of 'resolving the Question'. Vexatae questiones are an authentic Russian characteristic though not because Russian spirituality is any greater than that of other countries. This is not the point. We could, rather, formulate the hypothesis that in Russia spiritual, emotional, and intellectual problems are far less fragmented, isolated, and separated one from the other than in Western culture. Furthermore, they interact, following extremely delicate mechanism, with the existence of every day and with social life, precisely because they re epitomes of an interior research or of a problem of contact between souls, of 'exchange of conscience'. When in Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov goes to kill the old moneylender, he does not do it for money. He is trying to resolve a question that for him is important, i.e. who he really is, if he is a person able to raise himself above ordinary morals, laws, and the commandments or if instead he is just an ordinary person. We can formulate Raskolnikov's alternative in the words of the poet Gavrila Derzhavin: Who am I? A god or a worm, a king or a slave? Not by chance Dostoevsky's novel create d a strong impression in Friedrich Nietzsche, even though read in a bad French translation. Russian maximalism, in particular in the genial interpretation off Dostoevsky, is contagious. Besides this, the 'public' contrition of Raskolnikov at the end of the novel is, in the context of this discussion, nothing other than a 'sudden' movement from one pole of awareness and existential orientation to its opposite. But how much intensity and emotional tension there is in the ordeal experienced before the resolving of the plot!
The writer and philosopher Vassily Rozanov, thinking about the difficulty of resolving the Kantian problems relative to the 'thing in itself', inopportunely explodes, 'We are terribly unlucky in our judgements in front of these dialectic things, since we are completely impotent'. For that matter we cannot be surprised that a man in whom reason and feeling have equal weight has written 'The soul is passion'. But let's talk about Pushkin. The most classical, harmonious, and balanced Russian poet in the verses of the Prophet decreed the poet's greatest task: 'Burn with words the heart of men' [my italics]. In his composition, incidentally, while wandering in the desert the poet felt a non-specific 'spiritual thirst'. Berdyaev defined Russia as 'the land of fantastic spiritual euphoria' and recalled two singular Russian historical phenomena: the self-immolation of masses of schismatic believers at the end of the XVII century, and the Russian impostors who, between the XVI and XX centuries, passed themselves off as the tsar or other members of the imperial family.
Vyacheslav Ivanov, recalling Berdyaev, spoke of a Russian soul as being as 'inebriated' and exuberant as the Russian steppes, and of how this soul 'craves for the absolute'. He held that revolt against any kind of artificiality is inherent in the Russian soul and that the national character is steeped in a desire for the naked truth, a feeling for stripping away any kind of veil or ornament. This aspect of the national spirit is summed up by Blok in On the Field of Kulikovo, 1908: 'Eternal struggle! Only in dreams does calm appear to us'.
The 'incompleteness' of Russia and its 'boundlessness'
When, after his forced exile to America, the poet Josif Brodsky was asked why he had chosen to settle there, he answered 'I am used to living in a large country'. 'Russia is too large a country to be completed', Yuri Mamleev stated. He was referring to the immensity of the 'idea of Russia' rather than to its geographical dimensions. If it is true that Russia is a vast country it has, even so, its boundaries: its 'boundlessness' is a metaphor of Russian self-awareness, as rich in poetic as philosophical content.
Its 'incompleteness' can be explained concretely as the overall particularity of Russia's historical path and the totality of the cultural connotations of Russians.
If we consider the history of Russia we note that, from the time of Chaadaev onwards, no period has had a natural conclusion. Russian history has developed through crises and catastrophes. Violence, wars, schisms, infighting and revolutions have deeply marked the course of our country. Having taken its Christianity from Byzantium, Russia then took a 'leap forward' out of its indigenous past into civilisation, assimilating almost at the same time a new religion, new forms of government, and a new alphabet. Such an evolutionary process towards universal cultural values and political forms was interrupted by Tartar-Mongol invasions which isolated Russia from Western civilisation without, though, giving it an entree into the more evolved Eastern civilisations. The Rus' of the Kiev period ceased to exist and there began the age of the Moscow empire, marked by a cruel process of the formation of a new state with frequent tragic moments (the defeat of Novgorod and Pskov, the regime of Ivan the Terrible, the religious schism of the XVII century). But this historical phase too was rudely interrupted by the reforms of Peter the Great, considered by many historians a real revolution. The imperial phase of Russian history began which in turn was catastrophically cut off by the 1917 revolution and the civil war. There began the seventy year epoch of the communist regime. I won't even attempt to describe the price in human lives of the triumph of socialism. But then this regime too fell and a new state, Russia, appeared.
If we remember that the conversion of the Slavs to Christianity in the 10th century took place in a coercive and repressive manner the outcome becomes clear. In the span of one thousand years no period of Russian history has come to its natural conclusion. Evolutionary processes have always been interrupted by revolutions. It was always necessary to start from scratch, to begin again from the ruins. The potentiality of previous epochs, particularly in the fields of culture and spirituality, was never used as a meditated and indispensable heritage. For this reason incompleteness is a radical characteristic of Russian history. Russia as a society of free and steadfast citizens with stable institutions and an efficacious juridical system is still at the planning stage. The numerous brilliant conquests of Russian culture, recognised by the whole world, do not change the reality of the facts: the Russian national character, differently from Western and Oriental ones, has never developed completely, it has never formed in a coherent and definite way. In Russia there are great spiritual potentialities but little harmony at a cultural level. For artistic creativity this is a positive factor: art is always a violation of harmony and good sense. For a constructive historical development of the nation, however, the divine spark struck between opposite poles is not enough. This is why the Russians are so good at posing problems: they not only individuate them but are spiritually led to search for them. But essential problem are also resolved. Incompleteness, which all the same offers unknown possibilities, represents a basic component, not only for Russian history, but for Russians in particular. With such a history it could not be otherwise. It might well be that, besides history, geography too might have had an important role to play. Russia is neither East nor West, nor is it even a synthesis of these two cultures. It lies on the borders of these two enormous worlds. This vast country, with its tragic but great history, its confused but independent path through time, cannot however be considered as a civilisation of 'meeting points' or of 'syntheses'. Russia has always searched for the principles of its own existence, the criteria for determining its own identity, the aim that justifies its presence in the world. And at this point we enter the sphere of its 'boundlessness'. Russian culture has always been intimately aware of its own dignity and typological connections with respect to the western and eastern worlds. But the principles of Confucian ethics, of Indian knowledge, and of the observance of Islamic laws as embodied in the Sharia rules, were all extraneous to Russia. Not even the logical, rational style of European thought, the 'teleological' attitude of the West, suited it. It was necessary to elaborate its own criteria for self-evaluation. And these, in fact, proved to be really original and formed the inimitable 'face' of Russian culture. In his diary Rozanov wrote, more or less, that Russian life is terrible, dirty, chaotic but 'in some way sweet'. Russian poetry shows us, in a concise and vivid manner, a magnificent material for the comprehension of this national self-evaluation. We can see that the authors are ready to love their own country despite the misery of the population, the poverty, the national disasters and its tragic historical destiny. Maksimilian Voloshin loves the Russia that is 'vanquished', 'insulted' and which he enjoins to be 'humble and poor'. It is not a powerful and victorious country that makes the poet's heart tremble with love for it, but a 'dark, drunk' vagabond and sluttish Russia. We begin to wonder if poets do not so much love Russia despite its defects but because of them. For Sergey Esenin love for Russia the Prison, Russia 'in chains', is as necessary as that of the 'eternal truth' and Russian nature. Russian intellectuals and artists considered the discriminating factor of a genuine life and the supreme good for their own country did not lay in riches, force, power, morality, success, victory over the enemy, earthly glory or in personal profit. Such factors had nothing to do with logic, ratio, causality. So what does the value of the Russian principle of life consist in? In a programmatic quatrain Fyodor Tyutchev expresses the idea that Russia cannot be understood through sense: you can only have faith in it. In another verse he writes of the particular interior beauty of Russia, a 'secretly luminous' beauty that can only be perceived by Russians. Voloshin turns his eyes heavenwards in search of the real source of all Russian virtues and mysterious meaningfulness. We begin to understand the Russian 'boundlessness', as with its mystery, has for many Russian poets and thinkers a sacred character. The poets use religious expressions ('have faith', 'bend down') since in Russia you can only apply 'criteria that are not of this world'. The sacred is always a mystery and knows no limits, just because it has no concept of form. Russia between the XIX and beginning of the XX centuries was a Christian, religious country. But for Orthodox Russia, differently to Western Christianity, the boundaries between earthly and unworldly, human and divine were sharply defined and could not be crossed by the intellect or by human actions or initiatives, as in Catholicism or Protestantism. But in order to establish an interior link with the sacred, help is brought with the activity of the spirit, self-education, interior communication between man and the universe and other people, serene and free contemplation - but then, that is how things are in Russian culture and in the Russian mind. But the main element, obviously, is Love. Love for Christ, for one's neighbour, for humanity, and for the Motherland. It must be said that in Russian Orthodox doctrine and reality the theme of Russia and the love of Russia has had a very particular fulfilment. The fact is that the Russian Church has three forms: ecumenically Christian, Orthodox, and national. To this latter characteristic of Russian religion is linked a strong tendency to consecrate love for one's country. In Russia love for the house of one's fathers is a Christian virtue. So we can understand that in such a country, in poetry as in philosophy and anthropology, there has been a flood of thoughts, feelings, and images that present us with the theme of Russia in the incessant and intense correlation between sacred and profane, the national and universal. If the Russian Church, with its special role in the life of the country and with its strongly consolidated national role (at a practical level if not a doctrinal one), has lost much of the universality that is part of original Christian doctrine, the art and spiritual life of Russians has gained a great deal from this very circumstance. Art in general, and poetry in particular, have been used to reconcile the irreconcilable poles of creation, its sacred mystery, and the national sphere: to secularise the divine and make divine the secular. And the unifying element was Love, a spiritual energy. For Russians, Jesus Christ was, I repeat, above all Love, compassion, pity for humanity and the world, the Saviour and only in second place was he Logos, the earthly Emperor, the Supreme Judge. Taught to have a sacred love for the Motherland by the Russian Orthodox variant of Christianity, Russian culture has searched intensely for a way to the reunion of the particular with the universal, the concretely earthly with the divine principle, the finite with the infinite. And it has found it, after an obstinate search, in the national theme itself.
In artistic creation the image of Russia has found its full organic unity and universal resonance.
The compensation for what the Church was unable to give fully is due to Russian culture at the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX centuries.
As a result of its free nature, Russian artistic and intellectual culture has voluntarily aimed at violating the insuperable boundaries between the sacred and the profane that had been given the blessing of Orthodox culture.
Everybody knows that human creativity has no boundaries. Overall, Russia and the Russian element have been the object of the intellectual re-elaboration of a national principle which has become a universal or, one might say, a cosmic/sacred principle. This is the origin of Dostoevsky's 'Russian as total man' and Vladimir Solovyos's man-god, of so-called Russian Messianism, the extreme manifestation of the Russian idea. Perhaps as a result of what I have said, we can begin to understand the reason for which Russians deify Russia, bowed down before her, and had faith. And for which this humble and 'pitiful' Russia not only did not revolt them but actually inspired the beautification and spiritualisation of the Russian 'other side' of things: the misery, filth, the rags and drunkenness that gave foreigners a sense of disgust, of disdain, and of superiority. Russia, mysteriously blessed by every bounty of the earth, contained in itself all contradictions without being damaged by them. The abyss between 'Holy Russia' and 'Cursed Russia' could only be bridged by repentance, and Russian poets and thinkers were aware of this.